Saturday, October 17, 2015

I just got back from Washington, DC where I participated in my first meeting after being appointed to the Law Enforcement Forecasting Group, a DOJ think tank composed of both academicians and egghead-leaning practitioners like me. We had lively discussions on issues of concern now and in the future for American policing. I'm working on a blog post about one of those issues, but it's a slow go.

In the meantime, I just sent an internal email to some of the staff most interested and involved in our PulsePoint initiative, providing a status update. It's probably worth sharing, so here's the latest:

"As of 0800, we have 3,011 people who've downloaded PulsePoint and are following LF&R. Richard Price, the foundation president, tells me that a good target for a community is to reach 1% of the population within the first year. We blew by that in the first week, so I think we've done pretty well.

In all, 8 alerts have landed on 29 phones since the soft launch on Sept. 2nd. I suspect that's about the volume we will see--around 4 to 6 incidents in public places per month of a call type that generates an alert.

One of the big benefits I'm seeing is a greater awareness by citizens of the volume and variety of what we do. We're generating some in-person, on blog, and twitter comments about that, and a it has come up in a couple radio interviews I've done this month. That's a good thing. The traffic crash alerts in particular seem to be valued: about 850 people receive those alerts right now, and there seems to be an immediate uptick of a few new followers after each one.

We've also had quite a bit of activity in new AED registrations spurred by PulsePoint. Back on July 17, we had 155 AEDs registered in Lincoln, and we now have 268.

The American Heart Association just released their latest CPR and ECC guidelines on Thursday, and for the first time include a recommendation for mobile apps such as PulsePoint. The post on their blog yesterday summarizes:

Lincoln Public Safety Links

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